I played a good hour or so of a Spanish translation for Last Bible II. It’s a Megami Tensei game so there are many elements I’m familiar with. I haven’t spent a significant amount of time in any MegaTen game released before Nocturne, so I can’t comment on what elements are innovative for the series. What surprised me was how the setting was more of a generic fantasy world than what I’ve seen before.
My character was raised by beasts so he is much better at talking to them than other humans. This means I can chat up beasts and add them to my team. The conversations are a little dull and repetitive though. Monsters usually ask me if I like killing beasts, if I want something from them, or if I’m honest. It’s a roll of the dice to see how they respond.
Battles had been boring for most of my time with the game until I made it to the first boss. Until I faced him, I usually just hit auto and let my party bash on whoever was in front of me. I only had a fire spell and only two people out five in my party had any magic at all. When I started fighting the boss, I realized that most of my party could only do 1 point of damage while he could kill my guys in one hit. This is when I learned that I can order of my guys to essentially sacrifice himself to prevent someone else form getting hit. It was a nail biting back and forth of sacrificing my non-magic users to protect the two who could cast fire. I liked how balanced it felt in the end.
The dialogue is about as charming as any other JRPG, so while I get a decent baseline of enjoyment out of it, I probably won’t play much more.